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The Secret Ingredient to a Magical Grownup Christmas

Kasey Q. Tross
4 min readDec 18, 2020

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How changing just one simple thing made my Christmases unforgettable

Photo by Freddy Castro on Unsplash

The year was 2013. I was taking a break from a whole-house decluttering binge and checking my email, when I saw this message from my dad:

Hey guys! We’re getting started on our Christmas shopping so we wanted to get everyone’s wish lists. Let us know what you want this year or you may get a singing Billy Bass, ha ha.

I frowned. And I’m pretty sure at that moment the box labeled “DONATE” in the corner of the room started shaking a little bit with laughter, the random crap inside mocking me.

You can’t escape STUFF! it seemed to say. They want to give you more STUFF!

I shut my laptop and went back to work picking up toys, books, clothes, and other random items my family had accumulated and putting them away, now mulling over what I should ask for, and getting increasingly more irritated as I went.

Irritated at all the junk.

Irritated that I had to get more junk.

Irritated that I had to try to come up with what kind of junk to get.

My angry internal rantings were interrupted by a phone call. It was a leader from our church. She said that there was a young woman who was about to have a…

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Kasey Q. Tross
Kasey Q. Tross

Written by Kasey Q. Tross

Musings on motherhood, writing, life, and relationships– and the struggle to stay sane through it all.

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